ON August 1 new cars with the S prefix will be driven from local

showrooms by their new owners, many of them company reps, hoping to turn heads - and in many cases succeeding.

However, next month's annual numberplate change will be the last as we know it after 31 years.

The current situation obviously creates a bad bottleneck for dealers as people wait until August to swap their vehicles.

Now a TWICE yearly plate change will have the effect of levelling out sales peaks and troughs.

But it is even more of a sickener for people who can't afford to change their cars every couple of years. Their pride and joy is going to seem older even quicker, if you know what I mean.

I do think the powers that be could have come up with a better solution - other than buying private number plates.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.